I’m trying to figure out a budgeting system that works for me. I’ve tried a few that use Plaid integrations but they haven’t been effective for me.<p>I’m looking for something that will give me daily / weekly notifications of how much I’ve spent. Might end up building it but was curious if there’s anything off the shelf like that.
I am using actual budget (which is free and open source) for this exact use case. It won't notify you but it has dashboard that can show you how you are spending<p><a href="https://www.actualbudget.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.actualbudget.com/</a>
I highly recommend LunchMoney (<a href="https://lunchmoney.app/" rel="nofollow">https://lunchmoney.app/</a>). It's built by a solo developer who is very responsive and continues to make the app great. Lots of automation and ability to create custom classification rules. I've been happy for the past 3 years.<p>I've also heard good things about CoPilot (<a href="https://copilot.money/" rel="nofollow">https://copilot.money/</a>) but have not had the chance to experiment with it yet.
YNAB generally gets mentioned as one of the de factor budgeting options. I used it a lot a few years ago and it works. Their system is a little wonky if you aren't used to the envelope method but they have great docs, a great little podcast and a healthy community.
I've been so picky over the years and tried so many different services, but I always ended up back in a spreadsheets. Infinite configurability, but more manual.<p>That said, I found a middle ground about six months ago. The spreadsheet tracks the budget, brokerage contributions, statistics, and savings (think monthly money being set aside for yearly payments and such), and then I use Monarch Money for tracking transactions.<p>Manually tracking my transactions in the spreadsheet was just so tedious and having Monarch handle that via Plaid and the three-ish other services that fill the same space has been nice.<p>One issue I have that isn't the fault of any app or service is that there are still plenty of banks that don't support OAuth for reading data. The big ones I use all support it no problem, but my primary, smaller (not tiny) bank and even Discover want you to use your _same_ username and password along with a checkbox in the settings to "allow third party access". They don't tell you what is limited via that third party access either, so I can't tell if it allows read-only when there's no MFA involved or what. In those cases, I still manually input transactions, but it's the vast minority of my transactions.<p>Monarch will give you notifications for transactions, overages on budgets, etc, but I bet any half decent service will do the same at this point.
At this point I have tried them all and don’t like any of them. What I really want to know is more granular data on where I am spending my money on. These apps will tell me I spent $6000 last year at Costco but it cannot tell me if some that was on spur of the moment items like a new pair of bedsheets that I probably didn’t need or actual groceries.<p>What I want is an app that can do OCR recognition of the bill or invoice and categorize the individual items and not just the whole invoice into a broad category. Sadly this tech does not exists.
Here's my opinion: there's actually two very different use cases here. Most apps I've tried do not distinguish between the two and that, for me, is their downfall.<p>Sometimes, you're in the moment trying to make a decision about whether or how much to spend. Call that use 1. And sometimes you're looking back at your spending history needing to make some sense of what has already happened. Call that use 2.<p>For use 1, I have started using Paktol[0], a weirdly-named phone app made by the guys who created ClojureDart[1] (and written in that Clojure dialect). It's extremely simple, and that's the point. You set a target amount of discretionary spending each day, and it tells you how much you have left or whether you're "overdrawn" for the day. That's it. There's no categories, no analytics, nothing like that. You just plug in every expense that's discretionary and it tells you if you're on track. It's so simple it <i>almost</i> annoys me that it's paid. But it's working and no other money tracking app I've ever tried has. It has already paid for itself in better decision-making on my part for having it, so I actually can't complain.<p>For the second function, I'm just using Excel. I have my own cobbled-together categorization system that's working well enough, and aside from having to go download transactions manually from my different accounts because they don't have an API, the bulk of the categorization work for new entries is automatic (Power Query is very cool).<p>Part of me wonders what an all-in-one solution could look like and I daydream for ten minutes about making one myself. But that never lasts more than a minute or two. There's a reason so many have tried and failed. I'm not smarter than any of the hundreds of people who have already tried and only partly succeeded.<p>[0] <a href="https://paktol.t10s.com/" rel="nofollow">https://paktol.t10s.com/</a><p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/Tensegritics/ClojureDart">https://github.com/Tensegritics/ClojureDart</a>
I've tried a variety of tools over the years and always end up going back to a low tech approach: spreadsheets. I set up my credit cards to email me after every transaction, which I then manually copy over to my spreadsheet with additional category information. Pivot tables give me a breakdown by category / month.<p>The added friction of having to manually copy everything over is a nice incentive to buy less stuff.
YNAB was often recommended, although I cannot personally understand "budgeting" as a concept and how YNAB helps you achieve your financial goal.<p>(When I was a graduate student with $20k income, I spent a lot of time thinking about how to save money. Then, one day, all of a sudden, I realized that I should use that time thinking about how to earn more money instead. These days, I earn more than 10x that number, and the only rule I try to abide by is do not buy things I don't need, as I already have a good spending habit. I never felt as financially constraint as when I living on ~$2000/month.)
I've settled on good old fashioned spreadsheets.<p>Why?<p>One, I pay cash as much as I possibly can (fuck surveillance finance), so using something that brings in my transactions isn't <i>that</i> much of a time savings. I have a minimal number of monthly scheduled transactions, so bringing those in manually just isn't really that painful.<p>Two, it adds a tiny bit of friction to my spending. This is a good thing (at least for me). If I know I have to write down the amount, and if only briefly think about what I've already spent this month, it slightly dissuades me from conducting the transaction.<p>Again, this works for me. Sharing in case it works for you.
<a href="https://plaintextaccounting.org/" rel="nofollow">https://plaintextaccounting.org/</a><p>Quite a bit of a ramp up to get used to it, but no other tool outside of spreadsheets comes close to flexibility.
I'm a big fan of Tiller [1], which is a paid service that basically just connects Yodlee to Google Docs or Excel. It will dump all your transactions and balance info into a spreadsheet and you can do what you want with it. It also has lots of templates for things like budgeting etc. I run a daily cron job that loads the transaction data and produces a nice Jupyter-based report. It will require some custom building, but the API plumbing is done for you.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.tillerhq.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.tillerhq.com/</a>
I'm a spreadsheet pro, but I set up this budget stack — Actual Budget + SimpleFIN — for my spouse last week.<p>SimpleFIN is fast and a quick Plaid alternative for just $1.50 a month or $15 for the year. I created my SimpleFIN account, copied the API token, and added a bank account. Then I jumped back to Actual Budget, entered the API token, and linked the account from Actual to SimpleFIN. You can link as many bank, credit card accounts as you want with one SimpleFIN account.
I've tried a bunch, and while I'm reluctant to recommend a Quicken product, Quicken Simplifi is actually working out really well for my family and I. The UI is similar to Mint & it supports Apple Pay. I used to export all my data from Mint to a CSV for further cleanup/analysis, but the built-in tools in Simplifi are good enough now that I just do everything inside the app.
If you decide to go the low-tech/DIY route, I will shamelessly self-promote my platform WebWidgets.io. It basically allows you to upload SQLite file(s) and then talk to them in JavaScript from a web app. I built a finance tracker app for myself using WWIO (I do a monthly download of my spending data from my online bank and then upload the CSV to my app). I've been using it for years.<p>The key issue in this world is that everyone wants a slightly different set of features, so any one-size-fits-all app will be too complex. DIY-ing it means you get exactly the features you want and no gratuitous complexity.
I've been using Qube <a href="https://qubemoney.com/" rel="nofollow">https://qubemoney.com/</a> for a couple years as a bank to help with my money management. It has some nice features, but I'm looking to migrate away from it over the next year. I'm a "Simple" refugee, who got here via "One".<p>The big down side is that it is fairly expensive, I spend almost $200/year on it. Which would be fine, if I felt like I was getting something for it. But, in the 2 years I've had it, I've not really felt like they've done much improvement of it, and my customer support experience has been pretty bad. For example, one time some of my "auto transfers" just vanished, leading to a couple hundred dollars in late fees, and when I contacted support they "recovered" them, but then I ended up with a bunch of duplicated auto transfers.<p>I also really just don't ever feel like I have much of an idea of how much money I have available. Simple was always very good about that: I could look and it would tell me an exact number I had that was unused.<p>Now, that $200/year is for a family plan, so it covers 4 people. Having debit cards and accounts for the kids is fairly nice. Transferring money to the kids for chores is handy.
For tracking Amazon spending, "Amazon Order History" is a Chrome extension that will walk through your Amazon orders and give you a spreadsheet of specific items in your orders. It's kind of kludgy, but does seem to work well.<p><a href="https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/amazon-order-history-repo/mgkilgclilajckgnedgjgnfdokkgnibi?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/amazon-order-histor...</a>
I used to use Mint, and now use Monarch since Mint shutdown. I'm pretty content with it as a tool to aggregate various accounts into a single place for review.
I gave up and went to Excel. I track the utilities separately, for everything else I import the monthly reports from the banks and do the analysis every quarter. Initially I was spending more time with this, but I am disciplined enough that I am just checking that I am in line with my expectations, no need for alerts. For some grocery account I don't check the balance for an entire quarter, I am always inside the limit.
Monarch is fine for me. But it probably fits under "plaid integration".<p>I got it when I had kids and my energy and time was redirected.<p>My prior system was boring: plain text transactions updated daily, and collated using ledger. (Ledger-cli.org)<p>The reporting and budgeting is top notch, and the lack of an integration means you're on top of every penny since you have to type it out. Honestly even with a full house it was only 2 or 5 transactions a day. Easy.
These tools always felt like a chore to me that didn’t really provide any value to me. Felt the same as “productivity” tools that people pay for to feel like they are doing something.<p>Now I’m just using a banking app (<a href="https://moneymoney-app.com/" rel="nofollow">https://moneymoney-app.com/</a>) that fetched the status of all accounts and shows them in one place including my portfolios etc.
I've been tracking my expenses meticulously and manually for over 10 years now with <a href="https://budgetmyway.com/" rel="nofollow">https://budgetmyway.com/</a>. I've built this to scratch my own itch, and built an expense tracker that meets "my" needs. I have a handful of happy users. This is more of a passion project and not a solo-startup or anything like that. I'd love to hear your feedback and see if it meets your needs. There are not any external data connections via Plaid, no 3rd party data tracking or sharing, your data is your data.<p>I know manual expense tracking might sound like a bear, but I find it cathartic and reflective to have to enter expenses.
If you don't need/want integrations but want privacy and full control of your data with simplicity and ease of adding expenses, I can recommend Budget Zen [1], which I have built and have been using myself for over four years, now.<p>It's end-to-end encrypted, open source, and you can self-host it.<p>When you open it, you can see with a simple green/red bar with how much you've spent and how much you have left for the month (for the whole month and per budget), in case that helps.<p>[1]: <a href="https://budgetzen.net" rel="nofollow">https://budgetzen.net</a>
I have tried all - Mint and many others. They were either too complex or weren't privacy friendly to my likings.<p>In the end, i ended up creating a simple react app. All the data is stored in a single json file that I sync. I load web app/app and just upload this json file.<p>Uses react-spreadsheet so all fields are editable.<p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/WUCAIGt.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/WUCAIGt.png</a>
I am working on BEXT <a href="https://github.com/bhu1st/bext">https://github.com/bhu1st/bext</a><p>Wrote a basic parser for this and using it I get the records in JSON which I use to show simple progress bars and dashboard.<p>Parser: <a href="https://github.com/bhu1st/bext-php">https://github.com/bhu1st/bext-php</a>
After more than a decade of trying to find a good one, the only thing I learned and I would share: if you’ve spent the money it’s already late tracking it.<p>Instead of tracking your expenses, create a budget in an Excel sheet, put aside the money for your regular expenses immediately after you get your salary, then invest the rest (create an investment plan) or transfer to a savings account.
I'm currently building a hybrid approach of automated spreadsheets + configurable dashboard/API at Fintable. The idea behind this is that you don't want to be locked into a single app, you love the configurability of a spreadsheet, but you still want automatic syncing of bank transactions and categorization. Check it out: fintable.io
[plug] I've been working on cashtrac.me to do all the thinking for me. E.g. "here's a better way to order your earning/spending". Looking for people interested in participating in user studies or just folks interested in the problem. Its free for use ATM.
Do not trust Plaid or services that use it - it stores your login credentials directly...<p>I use spreadsheets - download csv from your bank, import, label categories, then you can look at it any way you like. Doesn't take that much time, and with a few heuristics, the tagging can be mostly automated...
I use copilot. its decent, b/c it helps me manage subscription purchases better than the other apps.<p>For example, my car insurance is billed every 6 months, so every 6 mo, I exceed my budget for car stuff. copilot does a better job for accounting for these.
I found a good balance with Tiller (<a href="https://www.tillerhq.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.tillerhq.com/</a>). It gets everything in one spreadsheet where I can query and get quick summaries with ease.
Anyone using DAS Budget? 3-4 years ago it was all the rage, but I haven't really heard much buzz about it in the last few years. <a href="https://dasbudget.com/" rel="nofollow">https://dasbudget.com/</a>
My wife and I have a shared Google Sheet where we enter every purchase (logging date, location, cost, and category) we made that day. Then we reconcile it with our monthly budget that night and make spending decisions from there.
For Mac and iOS users, Moneywell is by far the simplest for using an envelope system. I love it. Local data. Solid syncing. Native app. Drag and drop money where you want it.<p>Edit: no notifications. Sorry I forgot that was one of your criteria.
Monitor your bank account.<p>1. Use a debit card or cash for purchases when practical.<p>2. Pay bills when they arrive, not when they are due. You are not earning money from the float anyway.<p>3. Supplement with other documentation ad hoc.<p>4. Improve the system over time based on what works for you.
I’ve been using Quicken for Mac and I love it.<p>It’s feature-rich, connects to most financial accounts and feels like a modern piece of software. It’s much improved from its Windows counterpart.<p>I run my entire financial life from it.
GnuCash [0] has looked the best for this every time I looked.<p>The initial setup seems the most inundating, and is why I haven't started using it.<p>I asked my highfalutin wealth advisors if they could set this up or knew someone who could. They said to just use a spreadsheet. (Not the answer I was looking for.)<p>[0] <a href="https://www.gnucash.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.gnucash.org/</a>
I tried budgeting, but found it to be too much work because there's no perfect way to automate it. Also, if you are card churning you soon end up with many accounts to keep track of making manual tracking a real chore.<p>I've settled for using Projection Lab to keep of my net worth and have monthly targets to hit. There's still work to do. But it's much easier since I only care about the totals.
on this topic what I really wish was that there was something that would actually stop me from spending when I'm over the budget. Attribution is nice, but organizing accounts or money folders that could just stop categorical spending would be preferable.
I just did this and used the app Emma but it is awful at breaking down and categorising transactions and the analytics seems to take a back seat to selling you some debt or investments. I’m tempted to build my own to be honest I think there’s a lot you can do to help people understand savings and becoming wealthy over decades rather than becoming an overnight crypto billionaire.